Pages

Thursday, November 23, 2006

The Age of the New Pilgrim Fathers is Coming: Look Out, Beatniks

Someone I know said the person they would most like to meet is Jesus Christ, so that they could find out what He actually said. Me too. Half the time when I hear Christian people talking about themselves and society I can imagine Jesus leaning down out of Heaven and saying Don't associate me with that crowd!There was a reverend on the radio this morning saying that Christians were now a persecuted minority in England. A minority, maybe, but persecuted? Really?? "This is a Christian country!" they will say, which sort of undermines the argument that they are in a minority, and harks back dangerously to an England that existed before multi-culturalism--was that the true England, people?. "We're a Christian country and yet we can't wear crosses at work! But try telling a Muslim they can't wear blah blah blah."It seems to me that Christianity has staged a phenomenal comeback in the last few years--and thanks, largely, to the arrival of large numbers of African emigres, O ye English racist Bible thumpers. It also seems that whatever local councils bring in in an attempt, albeit sometimes misguidedly applied, to serve the faiths and traditions of all the communities that now make up English society, the media still gives inordinate amounts of exposure to Christian activists complaining about this or that issue (how hard done by they are, usually.)

It also seems to me that my own life has come more and more into the environs of fundamentalist Christians, who state their views with the fierce conviction of all ideologues: they don't think they're going to be chain-whipped and driven out of town for saying what they say, in fact they seem to expect you to recant on your beliefs and sign up to theirs. With those people, wrathful judgement abounds. Increasingly it feels to me as if the Day of the Bohemian is over and we're heading into a new world that will bear more resemblance to the world of America's Pilgrim Fathers, or whatever they were called, than the loose, hip, tolerant, forgiving, enlightened liberal democracy I would like to live under.